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Saturday, August 29, 2009

You may remember several days ago I had a poll running asking you to pick one of five colors to see a post on. L’oreal’s Flight and Carmen from Zoya had no votes cast for them, YDKJ had one, two votes were cast for Misa’s Love Bite, and one person wanted to see another set of colors to choose from altogether. I’m sure I will blog about those two colors eventually, and the person what wanted some other colors will be in luck very, very soon.

But the clear winner, with six votes, was the nameless concrete grey from StrangeBeautiful.

I gotta say – I love this color. It is a stunning, blue-toned grey creme. My pictures don’t quite do it justice, as it’s much darker in person.

With flash

It’s obvious how over-the-moon I am about this color because of all of the pictures I took of it! This is done at two coats, and application was flawless. If it weren’t quite so expensive, I’d say that this varnish alone would be worth the purchase price of the whole set.

Sunny window

Indoors

I’d say the most true-to-life colors are the ones you see at the bottom. Poking around Google images, I think that the best name for this color would be “slate grey.”

I wore this lacquer for three days without even the slightest chip threatening. In fact, had I not needed to remove it for work, I’d’ve been thrilled to leave it on five days or more.

It’s that great, that chic.

Sigh.

The bad news is that you can’t just buy this color. You need to get the entire Library of Color. And it’s limited edition, so if you want it, get it while you can. The good news is that the other colors are gorgeous, too. You can see my full set of swatches here.

You get two videos to choose from today. At first I thought I would cheat in *August*us Gloop, but I remembered I already did a Willy Wonka scene recently. So you can skip over this video if you like --

-- and instead listen to this lovely piece that I only just found. I have not seen (nor heard of) the movie this appears to have come from, but I now want to see it!

And there you have the Color of August, 2009. A lovely choice, I must commend those who voted for it!

Friday, August 28, 2009

Before I tell you about my wild hair, I thought I’d tell you about the October Family Circle I just received. It’s not even September yet! Oh well, be that as it may, it came, and so I think it’s safe to say that if this issues isn’t on the rack yet, it will be soon. Certain people out there, such as Brooke, may wish to look for it. Why do I say this? Because there seems to be a high incidence of varnish- and Halloween-lovers out there! And take a look at the cover!

But I have to say, that I am less than impressed with it’s editors. I certainly haven’t sat down to read it carefully yet, but as I flipped through the pages I cam across a photo of polish that, well, somehow caught my eye. The corresponding text recommends we be on the Fall Fashion Bandwagon by having grey-toned nails. Their recommendation is Zoya’s Loredana. Not that I think anyone needs this reminder, but if you can’t remember what this varnish is, you can see my post on it. It’s a charcoal matte grey. Matte. Okay, everybody got that? Matte.

(Not the best quality, but the only one I could find with the line I wanted.)

So I have to wonder why they tell you that you can “de-gloss” this polish by using the Essie Matte About You top coat. There is nothing to de-gloss here. It. Is. Matte. Already!

Sigh, there are few things in this world as frustrating as people who have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. Like those who tell you your lacquer’s life can be extended by thinning it – with remover. In case you’ve ever wondered, don’t do that.

Okay – snide comments are done now. On to my wild hair!

When I bought my Wet N Wild polishes, I secretly bought two additional ones for giveaways! So here we go with my Very First Giveaway!

Up for grabs are Morbid and Rustic.

The bottom picture, with flash, shows the coppery Rustic true to life, but Morbid is a bit of a tricky mistress. The shimmer is a bit bluer than the top picture, and while the grain of the shimmer is better in the second picture, it is no where near that blue. It’s like a deep, blackened teal.

Okay, so this is what I’m doing: The first polish has already been won by Aquaheart! As a show of gratitude to those that have supported my fledgling blog, I put all of my Followers into a spreadsheet and then had random.org pick a number. Lucky number seven gets her choice of Morbid or Rustic!

Whichever one she doesn’t choose goes to another lucky winner! Since this is my first contest, please be patient with any growing pains that ensue. So here goes:

If you are a Follower, you’re already entered! If you don’t have a blog, send me an email so I have a way to contact you if you win. Or, if you prefer, you can just check back when it’s announced.

If you are not a Follower, or if you are a Follower and want another chanced to win, leave a comment below including your email. One comment per person, please. International readers are free to enter as well! The contest will remain open one week, through noon my time (7:00 pm GMT) 09/04.

Good luck to all, and I’ll let you know which polish is left after Aquaheart gets in touch with me!

I know it must sometimes seem like all of the polishes I wear are either something I consider faboo or else dull old workaday lacquers. But there are times I will pull out a “traditional” varnish that, I think, few people would notice. An excellent case in point is China Glaze’s Long Kiss (#87).

This is two coats, with the photos taken in the late afternoon with a soon-to-set sun. While I find this to be a rather nice color, it is also not anything to write home about, nor to go to your nearest nail polish supplier and demand their entire stock of. I don’t even remember how it is I got this color, as I had purchased it years ago, before I was slightly off-kilter for the flavor of a Pringle, as it were.

It is, simply told, a deep, rich color that I think can even be described as a “wine.” I enjoy wearing it when I’m not really looking to “wow” anyone, including myself, but I want to have a nice color to look down at. To tell you the truth, I’m all about the vampy colors. Truly.

Close-up

As far as I can tell, Long Kiss is part of CG’s core line, and very easy to find.

Suspecting that this color might be easily dupable, I took a look through my collection and one of the first ones I came across was OPI’s beyond famous I’m Not Really A Waitress. Looking at the bottles. INRAW just looks a little less shimmery, and maybe has a smidge of a brown tone to it.

Further investigation then turned up Orly Garnet Truth, January’s varnish from their “A Year In Rocks” collection, which definitely has glitter that LK doesn’t. And finally, there was one of the two NYC nail glossies I got off of a clearance rack clear back in January. No names to these, as far as I can tell, so it’s simply number 227.

INRAW, Garnet Truth, Long Kiss, 227; indoors with flash

Outdoors

The swatches below are one coat each, except for GT which got two due to it’s extreme sheerness. Same order as above.

These are taken without clean-up, so you can see that LK was actually the messiest. The closest dupe I have is 227, and I’m just not sure how easy – or hard – the NYC glossies are to locate. As I said, I got them on clearance several months ago, and I’ve not seen them since, at least in my local drug stores.

GT, probably because of the glitter, isn’t even close, and despite the bottle pics, INRAW isn’t even close; it’s far too warm.

You may remember my mentioning I’m a child of the Eighties. You can’t get much more Eighties – at least not early Eighties, – than Hall & Oates. Boy, does this song take me back!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

I wanted to let you all know about a few goings-on in the world of polish.

First of all, Glittermillie is having her first giveaway to celebrate the fact that she’s surpassed (greatly surpassed, at this point) fifty followers! So if you have not yet been there, or are not yet a follower – Get Over There! You can be the proud owner of five Barry Ms or an Illamasqua – of your own color preference!

I also see the $OPI (or, Sephora by OPI) has their limited edition mattes out now, available in three colors:

Matte Domestic Goddess

Matte Metro Chic

Matte What’s a Tire Jack?

I’m not sure if they’re in stores, but you can always find them at Sephora’s website. They offer the same recommendation of no base or top coat, or hand lotion. I, for reasons stated in the post below, may not be likely to get them, especially at nine bucks a pop, but I know that a lot of you are matte about these (sorry, I can get a little pun-crazy at times), so I wanted to pass along the info!

And finally, I wanted to show you some mini sets I found at a Claire’s recently. They are super cute (and, coincidentally, about the same price as one of those polishes above), but I just wasn’t feeling like spending the money at the time.

I’m pleasantly surprised that these pictures actually came out alright; I forgot my camera on this outing, so I had to use my iPhone.

As you can see, these sets seem to be identical; it just depends on which labels you like more. The dogs are sweet, but I’m afraid the penguins stole my heart. They are ten dollars a set, and I may just have go back again later for them, especially if they go on sale.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Actually, get all of the mattes you’d like – they are not only wildly popular, but pretty much every big-name polish company is coming out with at least three. Zoya, Nubar, OPI, and Orly (but, apparently, not Misa) are all releasing mattes, to say nothing of the all-matte lines of KO Knockout Cosmetics and ManGlaze, and matte top coats like the release from Essie.

The first I saw of these polishes was the Zoya MatteVelvet collection on Scrangie’s blog, and ooh, did I want them!

However, after some time went by, and I heard what a pain they were not only to apply, but to even keep on, well, I just wasn’t sure anymore.

But then Zoya had a Twitter code for three free polishes, and, I mean, there are three MatteVelvets, so, y’know, logically. . . .

The first one of these I wore was #498, Loredana - which, for some reason, is a name I can NOT remember.

Even the liquid form of the lacquer looks matte!

As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, you are not supposed to put this over a base coat. But I get the Heebie-Jeebies at the thought of putting this stuff on an unprotected nail, so I put it over some Nail Tek. This is doubly helpful, because matte polishes are not for hiding imperfections, so anything that helps fill ridges is bound to be helpful, hence the “get even” part of the title.

You may have also heard that this stuff dries fast. You have to be bold and daring with application on these; any pausing or or second-guessing, and you will lose what you’ve just applied as you try and correct it, resulting in some balding.

I was able to put on a second coat, however, after letting the first one dry a bit. And I do recommend not doing just one coat – this was was not “prêt-à-porter” at one. I’ll tell you something else, too; I may well be a bit OCD, but it drove me absolutely bonkers to not put a top coat on this. It’s like that scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he couldn’t stand hearing “Shave and a Haircut” being rapped out without the other shoe of “Two Bits” falling.

(I hunted high and low for that one scene on it’s own, but, alas!, it is not to be found. You can find it here are about the 5:55 mark.)

I did leave it as it was supposed to be for a few hours. As I went about my day, however, I kept obsessively thinking about my hands. This chips easily; act as though your hands are made of glass. This loses it’s matteness easily; don’t wash your hands too often. It’s not designed to last; no applying of cuticle oil or hand lotion.

As much as I enjoy polish, and as forefront as it can be in my mind from time to time, this constant vigilance (as Mad-Eye Moody would say) was making me unable to simply enjoy my lacquer. It was an interesting look, but if all I’m doing is worrying about preserving it, well, something is wrong with this picture.

So, as I had long suspected I would do, I added a coat of Poshe to it.

(Ew, nasty cuticles – please try to ignore.)

How weird am I? Everyone else out there is mattefying every polish in sight, and I have to go and do the exact opposite! But as I’m sure you can see, adding a shiny topcoat brings out an amazing shimmer and depth to the color.

I did like the matte effect, in the end. Maybe it’s like when you’ve had your first baby, and you’re absolutely paranoid about anything and everything within a five-mile radius. By the time you’re down to your third, as I’ve been led to understand, you kind of loosen up a bit.

If there’s only one thing that wearing nail polish has taught me, it’s that nothing’s permanent. No matter how much you like a color, nor how careful you are with your application, well, it just doesn’t last forever. You can try and fix it, but ultimately this falls in the category of temporary art.

So maybe by my third application I’ll loosen up and go about life as usual. And worse comes to worst, well, there’s always Poshe!

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Normally I avoid superlatives – it’s only a matter of time before they get debunked, anyway. But this time I’m going whole-hog and using not only superlatives, but also the word “important” in association with nail polish.

First I want to reiterate something I know I’ve seen others say before; the nail polish blogging community is filled with some of the nicest people there are out there. But I learned the truth of that even before I became a blogger myself, and I was just drifting about the Ethernet as a reader.

There are two people, specifically, that jump immediately to my mind. One of them is Wixbetty, but as she deserves her own post, I’ll go into more details later. The other is the incomparable Jen of NeverTooMuchGlitter fame.

As you may recall, I have alluded once or twice to some tough times I’ve been going through. Well, a few months ago I first started a correspondence with her about some really nice nail art designs that she creates and sells on her Etsy web store. Shortly thereafter, I was in desperate need of her frankening skills for another reason.

Between the two of us, we agreed that I’d write a post of my experiences, and she’s posted that today. Please either go check out this post, or at least check out her blog in general (the link is above), because not only is she one of the best people out there, her frankens are amazing and her writing is really sharp. She finds inspirations from the most unique sources, and every once in a while you can find some jaw-dropping over-the-top Japanese nails featured there. I love to look at them and try and figure out how people go through one hour of life with those claws (and their detritus) attached.

In closing, I’d like to put up a clip from one of the movies that most helped me through this tough time. Whenever I had moments of pain and doubt, I remembered that just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean you can’t believe it, and that True Love never dies.

If you have not seen Secondhand Lions, do yourself a favor and find it. It didn’t get too much attention when it first came out, but it is a phenomenal film.

Whatever a Fiji Weejie Fawn is (does anyone have a clue??), it is one of my absolute top-favorites when it comes to work-appropriate colors. For me, that pretty much means “nude.”

When I first found this, it was in a dusty for one dollar, and I had absolutely no reason to pause for even half a second before snapping it up. Cheap. OPI. Work-wearable. Check, check, check. But from the first moment I put this on, I started staring at my nails as if they had just doubled in length for no apparent reason. I. Freakin’. Loved. This. Color!!!!

Really, I’m not too sure I can tell you why. I just know that when I’m needing to get on another Trip-B color (AKA BBB – Band-Aid But Better), this is one of the few I can put on and still feel like I’m wearing a knock-it-out-of-the-park polish.

From what little research I’ve done – you know, surfed the ‘net and Google for awhile – it seems as though this is a discontinued color from the Classics line. Still easy to find, though, from prices ranging from $5.95 to $13.00, and that’s with truly limited search patience.

It’s one of the few colors I have a back-up bottle of, having found a second bottle at another local store. But the second bottle has a black label rather than a green one. I think (and please tell me if I am mistaken!) that the black labels are the old formula, and the green the new. If you want me to compare them, drop a line, but as you can see, if the color varies, it’s only slightly.

(The one on the left, with the green label, is the one I am wearing in these photos.)

Anyway, this is three coats. You can get away with two, but I feel like the color isn’t quite what I want it to be at two. I think of it as a bit of a “sand” color, or even a medium/dark cream.

Lovely, just lovely.

And you know I just gotta do this, with “fawn” in the name!

(The great bonus for me is that this is one of my favorite songs – and scenes - from any of the Disney movies.)

I also wanted to do my part to bring attention to Nicole’s amazing idea of a nail blogger Secret Santa! It sounds like a whole lotta fun, and it’s open internationally; which means we can get non-local varnishes!

And if you have not yet checked out her blog, get thee over to MagicXMaid right away!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

You know, I’m not really a pink person. Don’t think I’ve ever been. Maybe when I was very young, but I remember being all over purple, and anytime I could get something in a rainbow, that was what I wanted. As such, I have a rather small collection of pink polishes. Some just appealed to me one day as I was looking at polish (Sinful’s Easy Going), some are part of a collection (China Glaze’s Don’t Be a Square), and some are just really different (Revlon’s Sinful Strawberry). But well and truly, I have very few in my collection. Twenty-one total. That’s a minority of my collection, believe me.

So as I was getting ready to do my pedicure (which is really little more than a fancy word for changing my toenail polish, as I do little more than that), it struck me that I wanted to wear one of my vibrant HDs that were glaring at me. (I don’t use that word for its negative connotation, it’s just so much like there was glare coming off of them.) So, as I often do, I asked my BF for input in picking out a color. I knew the color family I wanted, so I brought out Digital, Three D, and Hi-Res. He picked the Digital (#06).

Now, at this point in time, I had only ever worn BLU, and, well, we all remember what a nightmare to apply that one was. But here’s the thing – I totally suck at applying polish to my toes. I can’t get my foot close enough to my face, so I can’t swear whether it was streaking like BLU was or not. Point of fact, it looked like I was good to go with two coats, but I decided to play it safe with a third.

I finished up painting, and I liked it. I did – good color.

The next day as I’m walking about, I keep glancing downward going, “You know, that’s really a great color.”

By the third day I wore it, I LOVED it! Inside, outside, it was always glowing! Can I call it a neon? I don’t remember it drying matte, but who knows, right? But if it’s not a neon, it sure feels like a neon. It glows like that. In fact, I’ll throw caution to the wind (you don’t mind, do you, Wind?). It is a neon!

I say this in part because I have a father who has collected neon signs for years, and I can easily picture this color coursing through the glass. So, as far as I’m concerned, these are neons. At least for the colors I’ve worn. If anything changes, I’ll let you know. Promise.

But I am not going to subject you gals (guys?) to my feet. I know, I know, we all think our feet are weird and no one is as picky as we are about our own bodies, and blah, blah, blah. And that is true for me. But also, as I said, my application really sucks eggs. I mean seriously. Polish all slopped on my toes and everything. And the only clean-up I do is what comes off in the shower. So I had to wait until I did a mani with them. And finally, I did!

The Craw!!

(Not in the slightest politically correct, and I apologize to anyone who finds this offensive, but Don Adams and Get Smart will always have a special place in my heart!)

I have to say, as the second color from the collection I’ve worn, night and day when it comes to application. Applied beautifully. The brush splayed appropriately. Two coats gave me this gorgeous coverage. (Though there appears to be VNL in the pictures, I couldn’t see it at all IRL) You can see some tipwear, but nothing major.

However, I do have to cop to the fact that this polish did bubble. Bubbled pretty bad, actually. It may have been the formula. It could have been the SH base coat/top coat I used with it (that really felt as though it could do with a thinning, but as I was not at home when I did my nails, thinner was not at hand). It might have been the fan that was blowing indirectly on me during the application. Who knows? But bubble it did.

Interestingly, though, this color is such a, well, COLOR that the bubbles were completely beyond notice to me unless the nails were pretty close to my eyes. When this color started chipping after a couple of days, if I didn’t think about it, I wouldn’t even notice. And that is not my M.O. – normally chips drive me insane! Again, I think that when you look down you see COLOR, and because of that, you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, as it were.

But I could NOT capture the beauty of this color in photos. Check out this bowling ball – this is what I was looking at!

(Available at ebonite.com)

I picked the following clip to go with this polish for a few reasons. First off, talking about all of the colors I liked as a kid is *really* taking me back! On top of that, there’s something about this color that’s making me think of the 80’s and, specifically, leg warmers. Yeah, I don’t know why, either. Secondly, the fact that I’m all into pink is magic in it’s own way. And finally, there is a pink light that’s shining down on the stage and the people and props on it that is colored very similarly to this polish!